What does robotics mean to you?¶
- What is a robot?
- What is robotics?
- What is important for a roboticist to know?
What is a robot?¶
The IEEE defines a robot "simply" as:
A robot is an autonomous machine capable of sensing its environment, carrying out computations to make decisions, and performing actions in the real world.
What do you think about this definition? Which of the following are and are not robots, in your opinion?
Is this a robot?¶
Is this a robot?¶
What is robotics? What do robots (and roboticists) need to know?¶
What is involved in making a robot play pool?¶
- Perception
- Planning/Decision-Making
- Action
Most robots follow the same general paradigm.¶
How will we approach this course?¶
- Scope-Model-Validate loop
- The need for simulation
- What will we cover? What WON'T we cover?
- What tools will we use?
Scope-Model-Validate Loop¶
Why do we need simulation (modeling) in robotics?¶
- convenience
- expense
- safety
- robots can and do use "models" of themselves and their surroundings to make decisions!
Example (from a Lafayette Robot!):¶
Syllabus¶
Where do we start?¶
Two assignments are already released on the course website!
- A01: "reaction paper"
- A02: Webots simulation tutorials
There are also resources for you to lean on (I will be adding to these as they become relevant to lecture) linked on that site, along with a link to the textbook!
The Pololu Robotics "Romi" will be our focus this semester.¶
With our remaining time¶
- Check out the Romi resource
- Check out the Google Docs resource
- Begin working on A01
- Begin working on A02
Next Class¶
- A01 introcution: What ethical/economic/societal/etc frameworks exist to help scope a robotics project?
- Hardware/Software Walk-through: Downloading and using the Romi library in Webots and on a real Romi